


Those Whom the Gods Love

by ishafel



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-18
Updated: 2011-09-17
Packaged: 2017-10-23 20:15:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/254485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lee falls for Kara while she's still engaged to Zak, and it changes everything. AU, pre-series/ S1</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

They were civilian police, not Fleet, and it didn't occur to Lee at first that he was the one they were there for.

He was halfway down a bottle of ambrosia, halfway through the longest and worst day of his life, and when someone touched his shoulder and said, "Lee Adama?" he turned around and swung without looking. The cop was tough, but she was half his weight and she hadn't been expecting it, and he sent her to the floor without even meaning to.

And, as it happened, he was in a bar three blocks from the Academy, in the bad part of Caprica City, drinking in uniform, and almost all the other patrons were underage cadets with fake IDs. But the cop who was still standing tasered Lee even before he called for backup, and Lee missed most of the fighting, missed the MPs being called in, woke up in a cell by himself with a headache and bruises he didn't remember getting and the awful knowledge that his brother was dead.

It occurred to him, after a while, to wonder where he was, and why. He'd spent a few hours in the brig once when he was a cadet, and he didn't remember the heavy iron bars, or the reek of urine, or the distant screaming. He got up, and fell down, and got up again and staggered over to bang on the door.

Eventually a guard came, a heavy man with a club on his belt and a permanent sneer on his face.

"Look," Lee said to him. "I think there's been a mistake. I've had a little too much to drink. Maybe I could call my father, Commander Adama--." He could make the words come out clearly, if he concentrated. He just couldn't keep his eyes focused on the man's face.

"Oh, you'll get to make a call," the man told him. "But maybe you want to save it for your lawyer. I don't think daddy's going to be too quick to come to your rescue this time."

Lee stared at him, trying to make sense of the words. "I want to call my father," he said finally, icily, making it a command.

"Don't say I didn't warn you," the guard said, like he'd done Lee some kind of favor telling him that his father wouldn't want to hear from him. He turned and walked away, and Lee watched, him pressing his cheek against the cool metal and wondering why his ribs ached.

After a moment a uniformed police officer came through the door at the end of the hall and walked up to Lee's cell. "Lieutenant Adama," she said coolly, and when the light hit her face he saw the bruise that blackened her right eye, and then he recognized her.

"I'm sorry," he said tiredly. "About--." He gestured to his own face, which felt like hers looked. "You took me by surprise."

"Don't worry about it," she said, but she didn't smile. "You're hardly the first suspect to resist arrest. I shouldn't have mistaken you for a gentleman." She sighed. "You want to call your father?"

"Resist arrest?" Lee demanded. "Arrest for what? I'm a Fleet officer, I don't even fall under your jurisdiction."

"Capital crimes are under Colonial authority," she said. "Lieutenant, I would advise that you keep your mouth shut until your daddy can get a lawyer here, because you are going to be fracked if you keep talking."

"A lawyer for what?" Lee asked her, and only the pain in his head kept him from shouting. "Why the frak am I here?"

"You've been advised to wait for legal counsel, Lieutenant," she said again. "Do you acknowledge that?" She was very small, blond, pretty in a delicate way despite a fairly impressive set of muscles and the damage Lee had done her. She was not very much like Kara at all.

"Yeah," Lee said dully. "I acknowledge. Now tell me why you arrested me."

"You're under arrest for the murder of your brother, Zak Adama," the woman said, and there was more but Lee didn't hear it.

Later he called his parents' house and talked to his mother. She was drunk, and she started to cry as soon as she heard his voice. For once, Lee couldn't be angry with her. He wanted to cry, too, to press himself against her shoulder and feel her hand in his hair. She was his mother; he had loved her, once. She believed him, when he said he had not killed Zak.

His father was unreachable, on maneuvers with the Galactica. He knew his younger son was dead, but not that his older son was in prison for murder. He'd be back in time to bail Lee out for the funeral, and Lee almost wished that wasn't the case. He would almost rather spend the rest of his life in his cell, if it meant his father never found out.

Almost. After the first night, they kept asking him questions. Lee wanted to sleep, and they wouldn't let him. What had he and his brother argued about? What had he done to Zak's Viper? Had anyone helped him? Why had he resisted arrest?

Lee told them the truth over and over, until it started to sound like a lie, until he was no longer sure what he was saying. When he did shut his eyes he saw Zak's Viper burning, heard Zak screaming over the comm unit. He was glad, then, to be shaken awake by a stranger's hand, glad to be in an interrogation room and not on a flight deck. Glad that wherever Zak was, he was not screaming any longer.

The second day, maybe, because Lee was never sure what time it was, how fast time was passing--they brought him a copy of a letter from his CAG on Atlantia. She'd written in his defense, stating that he was an exemplary soldier and a gifted pilot. It was an extraordinary compliment from a commanding officer who gave praise only sparingly, and Lee could not bring himself to appreciate it.

The detectives in charge of his case appreciated it. "Daddy's little lieutenant," the man called him. "Looks like Daddy bought you the right commission."

Eventually Lee lost his temper. "When I applied for flight school," he said, "my father was another discharged Viper pilot with a drawerful of medals. He was flying cargo ships in the merchant marines because the Fleet wouldn't have him. I had to beg for recommendation letters like everyone else, and I graduated top of my class because I worked twice as hard as everyone else. Everything I have, I earned--War College and the slot on Atlantia included. How about you, Detective? Can you say the same thing?"

After that they put him in a bigger cell with a half a dozen other prisoners, all of them male, all of them under arrest for violent crimes. Lee sat on the concrete floor with his back against the wall and kept his eyes on the door. For the first time he was afraid, not only of what his father would say when he came, not only of seeing Kara again, not only of waking up and finding out that Zak was still dead and none of this was a dream. For the first time he was afraid for his life.

Sometimes the door opened and a prisoner was called out. Sometimes someone new came in. One of them, a blond man with tattoos spiraling up both arms, stared at Lee with an unnerving intensity. "You're pretty for a pilot," he said, "but that short hair makes you look like a man, sweetheart."

Lee didn't look up at him, didn't move, barely breathed. It felt like no one in the cell was breathing. The blond man wander closer, and Lee waited, ever muscle in his body tense. He stayed where he was until the other man was close enough to nudge him in the ankle with a booted toe and drawl, "Cat got your tongue, sweetheart? Let me give you some help with that."

Lee came off the ground fighting. He was outweighed, outclassed, and after the initial shock passed, outnumbered, but he slammed the blond man's head into the ground with enough force to shatter bone and then he fought like a cornered weasel until the guards came and knocked him unconscious.

It landed him in a cell of his own, one with no windows and a solid door. It was better than being raped. His head hurt again, so badly that he wondered if he had a concussion, and he could feel every one of the bruises that must be covering his body. He stayed on his bunk with an arm over his eyes to block out the harsh light and waited for his father to come.

By the time he heard a key turning in the lock he was beyond fear, or grief, or rage, in a hazy blur of exhaustion and pain. He got up, because he remembered it was important that they not realize he was hurt, even if he could no longer remember why.

It was his father, still in battledress and with a face as quiet as stone. It was his father standing behind the guards, and seeing him, knowing what he must be thinking, staggered Lee as nothing else had done. He was an Adama. He did not break, not where anyone could see him, but it was a close-run thing.

His father caught his elbow, steadied him. "Later," he said, and there was a promise in the word. "The funeral is in a few hours." He led Lee through the police station and pushed him into a car waiting at the curb.

Lee slid across to the furthest seat and leaned against the window. He was happy not to talk, if his father was. The driver wove expertly and silently through the crowded streets of Caprica City, and his father sat beside him and never turned his head.

When the car pulled into the drive of his parents' house, Lee got out as quickly as he could. It wasn't until he was standing that he realized he was wearing an orange prison jumpsuit with blood down the front. He fumbled for the car door again, thinking he'd say something to his father, and then the front door of the house opened and his mother ran out.

Before he could stop her--and he was not even sure he wanted to stop her--she had her arms around him, and was sobbing into his neck. Over her shoulder Lee watched the driver get out of the car. It was his father's XO, of course; Adama rarely went anywhere without Tigh if he could help it.

His mother took his hands and drew him into the house, and Lee let her. He did not turn to see if Tigh and his father were following. Once they were inside he shook her off and walked unsteadily up the stairs. His things were still on the bed in his old room where he'd left them. It had been--he thought hard--only a week since he'd come home on leave, four days since he'd left this room. He had slept with Zak's fiancee, had watched his brother die, had been arrested for his murder.

Numbly he stripped off his clothing and crammed into the garbage can before he stepped into the bathroom and turned the water in the shower as hot as it would go. He was shivering, but maybe he had been all along. While he waited for the water to heat he dug through the medicine cabinet and found a bottle of painkillers. He shook four of them into his palm and swallowed them dry before he stepped into the shower.

After a half an hour the water began to run cold, and he got out. His headache had eased a little, but he felt as if his head were fragile, made of blown glass and empty. His face in the mirror was a stranger's, blue eyes cold and hard as a child's marbles, and he nearly cut his own throat shaving.

When he'd put on his dress uniform, there was nothing left to do but go downstairs. His mother and Tigh were in the living room, both well on their way to being drunk. He thought, in his mother's case, that that might be a kindness. She looked even more breakable than usual in her black dress, and far too young to have grown sons, or to be married to a man as old as his father.

Tigh was quieter than usual, out of kindness or tact, or even his own grief. He'd been a frequent visitor, almost an extra uncle, when Lee and Zak were small. He'd loved Zak--but then everyone had. He handed Lee a drink and clapped him hard on the shoulder, and his eyes were sober and appraising when they met Lee's over the rim of the glass.

Lee set the drink untouched on the sideboard and moved to stand beside the window. He'd gone months in space without a glimpse of the sun, but suddenly he was desperately grateful for the warmth and brightness of it. He stayed where he was, until his father came in and said it was time to go.

This time his father drove. Tigh sat beside him in the front seat, and Lee sat in the back with his mother. She was just the right side of drunk, he thought, listening to her make brittle conversation with his father about the weather. Drunk enough to dull the blow of Zak's death, but not so drunk that she'd make a scene. Though she was less likely to do that with his father present, anyway. He always brought out her best behavior.

The funeral was held at the temple on the Academy grounds, the temple where Lee's parents were married, where he and his father and Zak--and Kara--were sworn into Colonial service, sworn to give their lives if it were asked of them. They had gotten Zak's life.

Lee could still see the accident, replaying in full color and sound, every time he closed his eyes. The last thing he'd said to Zak had been both profane and cruel, and Zak had shoved him hard across the flight deck. Lee had turned to go, had been walking away as his brother entered the launch tube. Had turned back just in time to watch Zak die.

He had been falling asleep. Now he jerked awake, gasping for breath, Zak's name forming in his throat. His mother rubbed his arm gently, but looking up, Lee caught his father's eyes in the rearview mirror. There was no softness there, no kindness. There never had been.

He stood between his parents at the service. He did not recite the prayers with them, but he knelt when they knelt, and he held his mother's hand. His father--his father had wanted Zak to be a pilot. His father believed Zak's blood was on Lee's hands. He did not even see Kara until suddenly she stepped forward to give the eulogy.

She was very pale, as fragile as Kara could ever be. But her chin was up, and her eyes shone not with tears but with anger. That was when Lee knew that she believed Zak's death had been murder.

"He clipped his wing coming out of the launch tube," he whispered, not even realizing until he'd said them that he'd spoken the words out loud.

His father squeezed Lee's bicep painfully hard. "Not now," he hissed.

"My name is Kara Thrace," she said, and her voice carried easily, filled the room. "I was Zak Adama's flight instructor. But what many of you don't know is that I was also his fiancee. I have never met anyone I loved as much as Zak, anyone as kind, as generous, as funny. It made him a terrible student--."

There were laughs at that. Lee didn't smile. He couldn't take his eyes off her, even now, even knowing that he'd never have her now. He had fallen in love for the first time when he was eight years old, not with a woman but with a Viper. Kara had that same fierce grace. If it had not cost him Zak, it would have been worth it--that one night with her would have been worth any other price.

"But it made him a wonderful lover, and a better friend. Zak was the best friend I've ever had. I did some pretty terrible things to him, betrayed his trust in every way that a woman can betray a man. There's nothing that I've done that I regret more. Zak, wherever you are now, I want you to know that I'm sorry, that I love you--."

Lee shook off his father's grip and edged away. He could feel heads turning toward him, but all he could think about was getting out of the temple. He did not run, not quite, but it was close. And then he was out, free, blinking in the sun. He sat on the steps of the building, shuddering, horrified at himself, at Kara--at what they'd done, at what had come of it.

He had not murdered Zak, but he might as well have done. The things he had said to his brother, just before Zak had climbed into the cockpit--it was no wonder Zak had frakked up, no wonder he'd crashed, no wonder he was dead.

He heard the doors of the temple opening, and scrambled up just in time to fade into the shadows at the edge of the building and wait for his parents to emerge. His mother came out first, on the arm of an admiral. Lee fell in behind her, listening to her talk about everything but the son she had lost. He had forgotten how much he loved her, how brave she could be, how strong. He had spent most of his childhood hating her, and now all he could think of was how like Kara she was.

His father was beside him, face very grim. Lee looked over at him for a second and then turned his eyes back to the ground. He had been afraid of his father all his life, as much as he'd been desperate for approval. It was disheartening to realize that had not changed. "Dad," he said very quietly.

"Saul's gone to get the car," his father said wearily. "You're all right?"

"Of course," Lee answered. It was a lie, and not even a good lie. He was so far from being all right that he might as well be on a different planet entirely. He thought, by the look the Commander gave him, that his father knew. But neither of them were willing to discuss it. Even had they not had the burial to get through.

A part of him wondered how much of Zak there was left to bury. He stood beside the grave while the salute was fired, and tried not look at Kara, tried not to look at the gaping hole of his brother's grave. He had been to a funeral on Atlantia, and he thought that surely this quiet dark ground was no lonelier than being shot into space to float forever.

Afterward came the part he was truly dreading, the part where he went home with his parents. His mother went upstairs to lie down and Lee and his father stood in the hallway looking at one another, twenty-five years of hurt and anger and silence between them.

"In the kitchen," the Commander said, finally. "I need a drink, before we talk about this."

Lee followed him and sat down at the kitchen table. He was so tired that the familiar outlines of the cabinets, the refrigerator, had acquired hazy shadows. His father filled a glass with water and moved so that he was facing Lee across the table, one of them standing and one of them sitting: like a courtroom, with Lee as a witness.

"Tell me exactly what happened," his father said, and Lee flinched at the words.

"Thursday night," he answered. "I met Zak and Kara--Lieutenant Thrace--for a drink at a bar near the Academy to celebrate Zak's having gotten his pilot's certificate. We had a couple of drinks, and then Zak had to go, to be in before curfew. So--Lieutenant Thrace and I had a couple more drinks. It was late. I walked her home--she lives in bachelor quarters at the Academy--and she invited me in. For a nightcap." This was the most difficult part, and Lee said it as quickly as he could, keeping his eyes on the tabletop. "I slept with her, Dad. I knew it was wrong, but I just--."

He risked looking up. His father's face was frozen, expressionless, not at all surprised. He had known. He had already known. "I spent the night there," he said, hating himself. "And Zak came in, really early, because he'd left something in her place. He had a key."

Lee could feel his father's eyes on him as he said, "He was furious. We'd betrayed him, Gods, of course he was furious--but it was as if he'd been expecting it, like this was just confirmation. He kept saying that he'd known there was something between us, that he'd known I'd always wanted her. It was really, really ugly. And then he slammed out of there, and I went after him, and we had the whole damned fight again on the flight deck of the Academy with half the crew looking on."

Despite himself, Lee felt his voice crack. "He did his preflight check before he got in the plane. I was still standing there, still trying to apologize. He said he didn't ever want to see me again, and he shoved me. So I turned around. I was walking away when he went into the launch tube. I turned around to watch. He clipped his wing, Dad, and you know as well as I do he wasn't a good enough pilot to correct that. Starbuck--Kara--she might have been able to do it, maybe. If anyone could have."

"And then what?" his father asked. "You went home, told your mother Zak was dead, made your way to the nearest bar, and started drinking?"

He was angry. Lee could feel it, even with his eyes fixed on the tabletop. As a child he had lied, if he had to, to keep his father from growing angry. He wished that he still could, that all of it be explained, justified, by a couple of simple lies. He had been caught, then, no matter how hard he tried to postpone the inevitable. He was caught now.

"After I told Mom," he said, "I went to Kara's. I had to tell her, too. She was--broken. She just fell apart. And everything I did, everything I said, seemed to make it worse."

"So you left," his father said, heavily.

"And went to the bar, and started drinking," Lee agreed. "By then it was late afternoon, I think, or early evening. The cop who came to arrest me--she came up behind me and grabbed my arm. I didn't mean to hit her."

His father sat the glass down on the counter hard, too hard, and Lee winced. "If you had murdered your brother, Lee--if you had murdered your brother--it would have been better than what you did do. And to try to blame it on that little girl--. I wouldn't believe it, not until I heard it from you. Now that I have--." For the first time his voice faltered. "Now that I have, I can't look at you. I can't even bear the thought of being in the same room with you. I thought you were better than this. I thought you were an honorable man."

He started for the door. Lee said, very quickly, "Dad. I'm sorry."

His father paused, but he didn't turn around. "So am I," he said. "I'm going back to i Galactica /i . Tell your mother for me. I'll pay for your lawyer, for whatever you need, but I don't want to hear from you again, Lee. Gods help me, but I hope they shoot you for this."

"So do I," Lee whispered.

The next morning they arrested him for the murder of Zak Adama. This time they shipped him to the Colonial prison in Delphi. Lee sat in the transport, hands bound behind his back, and thought longingly of his sidearm, on the desk in his bedroom where he'd left it. While he was free, it had not even occurred to him to use it. Now it was all he could think of: the way it would taste in his mouth before he pulled the trigger, the relief it would be for his parents.

The lawyer his father had hired met him at Delphi and escorted him to his arraignment. Lee knew him, a little. He was younger than the Commander, the son of one of Lee's grandfather's law partners. He had an excellent reputation as a criminal lawyer, and Lee fired him after the hearing. "I don't want my father's help," he said to him.

The lawyer smiled at him, clearly used to family disagreements. "Do you really think that it's worth risking your life on that?" he asked.

"Yes," Lee said. He did. He had just been denied bail; he knew they thought he was guilty. He would manage with the court-appointed lawyer, or he wouldn't. A part of him thought it would easier to be shot for a crime he hadn't committed than to live with what he had done. Even if they set him free, he didn't know what he would do with the rest of his life.

Lee had thought that Caprica City was bad. The remand center of Delphi Prison was a thousand times worse, a dumping ground for all the Twelve Colonies. The men there were, almost without exception, awaiting trial for either murder or rape. Most of them did not seem adverse to committing one or the other while they were waiting. Lee was young, and better educated than most of them, Caprica-born and from a comfortably middle-class family.

If he had not gone through boot camp before his first year at the Academy, he would not have survived. He was an Adama, which counted for less than nothing, but he had been taught to fight both with a knife and hand-to-hand, and the training given to pilots was the most exacting in the Colonies. He had been prepared to fight Cylons, and he used those lessons now. He did not kill anyone, the six weeks he spent waiting for his trial--but that was more luck than judgment.

He learned something about himself in that time. He learned that he liked to fight. His father had taught him to box, but this was nothing like that. There was no science involved, no skill, nothing but viciousness and brute force. For the first time he wondered whether he would have liked being a soldier in war, as he had not liked it during the peace that had lasted all his life. By rights he ought to have spent most of his time in Delphi in solitary, but the guards seemed to enjoy placing bets on him.

After the first week his eyes were always black, swollen half shut, and he had a cut on his cheek that was going to scar. After the first week no one called him pretty anymore.

His lawyer, the Delphi public defender, was exactly what Lee deserved for the price he was paying. Lee met with her a handful of times, and at every one of them she was frazzled, nearly in tears. He wondered how she managed in court when she couldn't even look her clients in the face. He could have had Lampkin back with a single phone call--and the guards owed him that, they'd won so much money on him--but he couldn't bring himself to do it. He liked the idea of trusting fate to bring him through.

While he was in Delphi his discharge papers came. Conduct unbecoming an officer, which was fair enough. Lee signed them without reading them, and sent them back by return post. He was burning his bridges, not only burning them but blowing them up. He liked the way it felt, to be free. He did not want to become his father.

Not that there was much danger of that. His trial began badly, with his mother weeping in the gallery, and got worse very quickly. The members of Zak's ground crew testified that Zak and Lee had quarreled, and that he'd had an opportunity to sabotage Zak's Viper. An expert mechanic testified that the accident had been caused by mechanical failure, not pilot error. And Kara Thrace testified that she and Lee had frakked, and Zak had found out about it and been devastated.

That was just before Lee was called to the stand. He got up and made his way over. He could feel Kara watching him, and he knew that she thought he was a murderer. Not only a murderer, but the kind of man who would kill his own brother. His hands were shaking, and he clenched them on the arms of the chair. He had expected to be nervous; instead he felt sick.

They asked him questions, and he answered them. That was all he could remember, afterward. All he could think of was Kara's white, frozen face staring at him from across the courtroom. He knew even then that it was not going well, although he could not have said why. He was not being framed, or anything like that, but they were too confident of his guilt, moving too quickly. They had made their case out of small things: his father's absence, the broken security camera which should have filmed Zak's final flight. A good lawyer might have gotten the charges dismissed. Lee himself should have been able to cast doubt on their case. If he had been able to think.

After the prosecution finished, the defense began. It was a disaster from very early on. Lee's attorney was outclassed and underprepared. And the other side was gunning for Lee, determined to make an example of him. Once his brain started working again, he saw their agenda: they were arguing that the Colonial military was too big, too unwieldy, and too expensive, that it had become a repository for sociopaths and idiots. Men like Lee, who were willing to kill anyone in their way, over anything.

He was going to be convicted. That was a forgone conclusion. The only question was whether it would be for premeditated murder, which was punishable by death, or second degree murder, which meant life in prison. Lee did not think there was much to choose between them.

He gave up, because it was easiest. It was easier to sit with his eyes on the ground than it was to listen as his mother, his closest friends from the Academy and before, the officers he'd served under and with, speak about his character in terms better suited to praising the dead. Most of them probably thought of him as dead. He was grateful that at least the Military no longer required discharged officers to be publicly drummed out.

They spoke about him in court, but they did not come and see him in prison. Lee was grateful for that, too: that he did not have to make conversation with them, did not even have to make eye contact. He felt, increasingly, like something inhuman, a feral animal that knew nothing except the fight to survive.

The jury deliberated for three days and found him guilty of murder in the second degree, which meant an automatic life sentence, not in Delphi but on Gemenon, in the work camps where they sent terrorists and political prisoners and intractables. Lee had thought he was resigned to that, or worse; now he realized that he was not. Now, when it was too late to do anything about it.

That night they put him in Delphi proper, with the condemned, until there were enough prisoners to make interplanetary transport worthwhile. What Lee noticed most was the screaming. Someone was always screaming. He was there for almost a week, and it felt like a lifetime. He did not see their faces, not the ones that screamed and not the ones who made him scream, and he was grateful for that. He had enough ghosts.

He was glad to leave for Gemenon. His cell on the transport ship was no different than the bunk he'd had on Atlantia . Clearing Caprica's atmosphere was like going home. For the first time he thought he might miss serving on a battlestar, miss the bleakness of space, the regimented discipline of the military, the certainty of written orders.

And then he was stumbling off the transport into the red rock and white sun of the Gemenon desert. The work camp was nothing but a row of aluminum buildings in the shadow of the mountains, and an electric fence topped with barbed wire. "Welcome to Gemenon," the guard said, shoving him into the administration building. "This is the end of the line."


	2. 2

His cellmate was older, in his fifties, and familiar looking. Lee thought at first that he must be someone from Fleet, someone who'd served with his father, maybe, but the man had a Sagittaron accent and Fleet officers in general and Viper pilots in particular were almost always Caprican. Still, there was something about him that made Lee think of the Academy.

"Tom," he said finally. "Tom...Zarek?" As soon as he'd said it, he knew it was true. He could remember that face, now, printed in black and white on the back of a book. "I read your book in college," he added. "After it was banned." Which was an asinine thing for a man convicted of murder to say to a man convicted of terrorism.

He had read it, though, his first year at the Academy; Zarek wrote better than he talked, sharp sentences filled with important words like freedom and conscience, and not honor and duty. It had stayed with him while he swore his oath to the Fleet, while Zarek bombed the government building and was arrested and tried and convicted and pardoned, and refused to recant and appealed and lost and appealed again. Zarek had his own war, and he had dedicated himself to it as fiercely as anyone Lee had ever met.

"Yes?" Zarek said, raising an eyebrow. He looked amused, and maybe he was. Maybe he got recognized all the time. "And you are?"

Lee Adama, he almost said, but it wasn't true any longer, if it ever had been. "Apollo," he said instead. "I go by Apollo."

"The son of Zeus?" Zarek asked. "The god of reason? The oracle of Delphi?"

He knew, of course. He'd known from the beginning, who Lee Adama was and what he'd done. Lee suspected there was not very much Zarek didn't know, even if he had been on Gemenon three years.

"Just Apollo," he said, and hoped Zarek would understand what it was he wasn't saying.

It seemed that Zarek did. "Fair enough, Apollo," he said, and put out his hand. "Everyone here has secrets, even from themselves. Why should you be any different?"

Lee took it. It was calloused, hard, with big knuckles: a laborer's hand, or a boxer's, not a philosopher's. Despite himself he liked Zarek's crooked, knowing grin. This was a man he couldn't trust, but at least Zarek was upfront about that much.

"Explain the system here to me," he said. "How do things here work?"

Zarek shrugged. "There isn't much to explain," he said ruefully. "We're contract labor. We do whatever needs doing. With the stipulation, of course, that it's something that requires no skill whatsoever, something a machine could do better and faster. In exchange we're given food and shelter and not much else. You might not have noticed, but we're in the middle of a desert, and there's no natural source of water on this side of the mountains. It keeps us honest. If you're looking to appeal, the C.C.L.U. provides free legal counsel. The guards can get you anything else you need, for a price. My advice is, keep your head down. Every once in a while they let some of the lifers out on parole."

"Yeah," Lee said. "I'm guessing I won't be one of them. I'm not sure how I missed being lynched the first time around."

"My guess is, you can thank Zeus for that," Zarek said, and Lee wasn't sure whether he was kidding or not.

Zarek was right about the mindlessness of the work. Lee didn't actually make license plates or dig ditches, but crushing rock to make road base wasn't much more exciting. Zarek was right, too, that it would have been cheaper to do it all with automated labor. He wasn't sure whether employing prisoners was a deliberate insult or paranoia on someone's part.

In a lot of ways, it was like being back at the Academy. He worked fourteen-hour shifts, and in his free time he ran, played Pyramid, learned to make ambrosia out of tylium and machine oil, read over and over the few ragged books in the prison library: poetry and law and the history of the Colonies, and drafts of Zarek's, smuggled out by the guards and published in underground newspapers on Sagittaron, where half the population was illiterate.

Zarek's contacts in the S.F.M. were good for cigarettes and pornography and months-old tabloids. His mother wrote to him every month. She was divorcing his father, and to Lee's surprise she sounded almost cheerful about it. But what Lee missed was news of his father, of Kara, of the Atlantia, his friends. And as much as he liked Zarek--and in some ways, Zarek was like another father--Zarek hadn't known Zak, and he didn't understand, and Lee couldn't bring himself to talk about it.

He became someone else on Gemenon. He had always been a good officer, but Zarek taught him that rules could be bent as well as broken, that politics was more complex and more interesting than it appeared, that leadership was not only a responsibility but a gift. Between them, he and Lee ran the prison, and they were good at it. The guards were overarmed and undereducated, Gemenese natives trapped in dead end jobs on a dead end planet. They were in awe of Tom Zarek and afraid of Apollo, and both Zarek and Lee knew it and took advantage of it.

It was nothing Lee'd ever expected, and despite that or because of it he enjoyed it immensely. It felt like a game, a game with no consequences, where everything he'd done before had been in deadly earnest. After all, he had lost his freedom, his family, and his future. The only thing he had left was his life.

He spent two years on Gemenon before he was granted a second trial. He would have been sorry to go, if Zarek had not been up for parole, and thus going too. But he had no particular hope that this time would be different, even though now he had Zarek's political connections and the weight of the C.C.L.U. behind him, and a lawyer who specialized in civil rights cases defending him. When he boarded the Astral Queen, his arms cuffed behind him and his legs in irons, it was not at all like going home.

The flight between Caprica and Gemenon was three days going out and five coming back. Lee slept for most of the first two, played three-handed Triad with Zarek and Benedict Mason, Zarek's old S.F.M. contact, also up for parole. Unlike Zarek and Mason, he didn't feel any particular urgency about his upcoming hearing; what he felt, more than anything, was depressed, flat, and tired. He tried, half-heartedly, to hide it, but he knew that Zarek, at least, saw through it.

What that meant was, he was asleep when disaster struck. They were in Colonial space, still, when Zarek's voice woke him, somewhere in the endless, almost untraveled distance between worlds. Lee knew, even before he opened his eyes, that something was wrong. It took him a minute to work out what. No one on Gemenon had called him anything but Apollo, even officially, but Zarek had said, "Adama. Get up, now," like it was an order. And Lee rolled to his feet like he was a private caught napping on sentry duty.

"What's going on?" Lee demanded, rubbing his eyes. "You and Mason staging a prison break?"

"No," Zarek said, watching him thoughtfully. "A mutiny. The Cylons are bombing Caprica, Apollo. We're at war. And I'd feel better if someone in the cockpit knew what they were doing."

"We're what?" Lee asked stupidly. "Tom--."

Zarek's eyes were steady, meeting Lee's. "The details don't really matter, do they? The how and the why? You're the only one with anything like the necessary training."

"Except that was two years ago, before I was dishonorably discharged and convicted of murder," Lee said. "This isn't Gemenon, Zarek, they aren't going to let me fly the transport just because you asked them to."

"But you could," Zarek said, watching him. It was not a question. "Couldn't you?"

Lee sighed and thought about it. "I'm not rated for it," he said finally. "But yeah, probably. The controls can't be much different than they are on a Raptor, and I was combat-certified to fly them, once upon a time. But what--?"

There wasn't time. The guard was coming back. And he had a set of cuffs in his hand. "Hands against the wall," he said, and Lee turned and stood with his back to the door, arms straight out to either side, while the guard came in and cuffed his wrists behind his back. "My orders are just to bring you up the bridge," he said gruffly, and Lee realized the man was terrified. "Keep your mouth shut unless they ask you a question, then you can answer it."

Lee's father had spent a couple of years on a freighter, and Lee had visited him once. That was the only time he'd ever been on a civilian ship. This one was similarly put together, an old troop transport, retrofitted--and probably similar to fly. But it was clear there was no military discipline here, no ship so tight as the one William Adama had run. The pilot was an old woman, and her hands shook; the captain was a drunk. They didn't want Lee's advice, they didn't even want Lee's help. They wanted a frakking miracle.

Lee listened to them explaining the situation, listened to the dead air coming over the comm unit, and wondered what to do. He was all out of miracles. "We need to get to Caprica," he said finally, "and see what the frak is going on. This ship is FTL capable, isn't it, Captain?"

"Yes," the man said, after a long pause. "But we can't--."

"I'll calculate it," Lee said firmly, with more confidence than he felt. "You and your pilot prepare the ship and crew for a jump."

The captain looked at Lee for the first time, and then abruptly came to attention and saluted sharply. Lee almost turned around to see if his father was behind him. He couldn't return the salute with his hands behind his back. Instead he said, "Have them bring me paper and a pencil, please. And strike these irons."

He knew how to do this. He'd done it dozens of times; it was just that none of them had been for real. Now there were hundreds of lives riding on the numbers he'd worked out. It had been a long time since he'd done something that mattered, and he wasn't sure he liked the feeling.

When he was finished he handed it over to the guard. "Tell the Captain to be prepared for anything," he said bluntly. "Gods know what will be waiting for us after we jump."

To his surprise, the woman hesitated. "What is it?" Lee asked impatiently, realizing as he did so that he was treating her like a very junior officer. He'd slipped into the habit on Gemenon, and Zarek had encouraged him in it, but there was no reason that these guards should be tolerating it.

"Sir, is it true that you're not actually a prisoner?" she asked. "That you're an undercover Colonial agent?"

That was Zarek, of course; Lee bit his lip to keep from grinning. Good old Tom, who never told the truth when a lie would do just as well. In another lifetime it might have bothered Lee: the practiced ease of the deception, or the surety that they were going to be caught and punished. It might have bothered Lee, but Apollo thought it was funny. "Don't blow my cover," he said, and she nodded to him, eyes wide, before she left.

After a moment the alarms sounded, signaling that the ship was on full alert. Lee waited, chained to the desk in the captain's bunk. When he closed his eyes he could see the numbers he'd written. If he was wrong, if he was even one number off, if he wasn't wrong but there was something new occupying the space he'd chosen--the consequences were unthinkable.

The guard came back. "Captain wants you at the controls," she said, like this was some kind of miracle, something he'd made happen. His wrists were free already, and she undid his leg irons, too.

Lee followed her back to the bridge. The pilot started to stand up, pushing her chair back, but Lee shook his head. "She's your bird," he said. "Jump on my mark." He counted her down from five, and on "One," he braced himself and closed his eyes, and they jumped.

When he opened his eyes they were inside Caprica's atmosphere, and the Cylon ships on the DRADIS were disappearing like snowflakes. "Stand by to fire," Lee said, when it was obvious the captain wasn't going to.

The comm unit suddenly blared to life. "This is Colonial Heavy 798," a man's voice said, "to the Colonial ship signing herself as Astral Queen. Astral Queen do you read?"

Lee leaned over and took the headset from the pilot and slipped it on. "Colonial Heavy 798, acknowledge. This is Astral Queen. What the frak is going on?" Looking at the DRADIS, he picked out 798, too close for comfort. They'd damn near jumped in on top of her.

798's pilot said, "I don't know. We're just a transport carrying civilians. This was a routine trip until the Cylons showed up. I was just docked on a battlestar. And where the frak did you come from, if you don't mind me asking?"

"We jumped in about thirty seconds ago," Lee answered. "Just wanted to see what was happening. What's your name, 798?"

"Michael," the other pilot said, and there was a definite edge of hysteria to his voice, now. "My name is Michael. We picked up an incomplete transmission--I think they nuked Caprica. We had a Viper pilot escorting us, and they shot him down. There was a basestar locked in on us when you showed up. You saved us. You broke their missile lock."

"Great," Lee said. "Michael, my name is Apollo--."

"Is this the Astral Queen?" a woman's voice interrupted. "Captain Apollo, my name is Laura Roslin. I'm the Minister for Education. Captain, I'm afraid that Michael hasn't been entirely honest with you. We got more than one transmission. It seems that the Cylons bombed all of the Colonies. President Adar surrendered unconditionally just before Caprica was hit. Captain, this war, or whatever it is--it's over."

"Yes, ma'am," Lee said automatically. "Sir. Is Adar still alive?"

There was the slightest of pauses. "No. We haven't received any transmissions from Caprica in some time, but it seems--it seems that I am the new president of the Colonies."

"Yes, sir," Lee said. Half an hour ago his biggest worry had been losing an imaginary fortune to Zarek at Triad. He wondered what Laura Roslin's had been. "There haven't been any further transmissions?"

There was a sigh, over the comm unit. Lee looked up, but the faces of the Astral Queen's crew were frozen, rapt. "No. Captain Apollo, I think we need to get out of here before the Cylons remember we're here. And I think we should round up any civilian ships we can find, and take them with us."

Lee thought about it, took a deep breath, let it out. "Madame President. Wherever we go, we're going to need to jump. That's the only way we can keep the Cylons from following us. That means that any civilian ships that come along need to be FTL-capable. I'm going to try to work out a safe place for us to jump. You evacuate as many of the non-FTL civilian ships as you can. We'll jump in sixty minutes, no matter what."

798's pilot came back on. "Any other advice, Captain?"

"Lay low," Lee said. "Very low. We're armed, but we're no match for a basestar. If the Cylons close in, run for it. And Michael?"

"Yes?"

"You're no longer Colonial Heavy 798. Your new designation is Colonial One.

The captain of the Astral Queen turned and walked away, closing the door of his cabin behind him. "He's going to get drunk," the pilot said scornfully, "that's what he always does in a crisis." She smiled at Lee for the first time. "What should we do?"

"Monitor the comm unit," Lee said. "Make sure we're ready to jump. Keep the ship on full alert. Actually--there's a man in the cells named Tom Zarek. This sort of thing is his specialty. Have him brought up and let him take over the communications. Ask him for his parole, and he'll give it."

He started to work on the jump coordinates. The guards brought Zarek up, and he went straight to the comm unit, thumping Lee's shoulder as he passed. He didn't ask useless questions, and he didn't panic, and Lee, half listening, thought that he was very, very good at what he did. Laura Roslin could do worse, if she was looking for aides. But even if it was the end of the world, Zarek was still a convicted terrorist, the old president's worst enemy. Better not to mention that.

He was nearly done when his father's voice suddenly came through, overriding Zarek and Roslin. "This is Commander Adama, of the BattlestarGalactica. I'm taking control of the Fleet." Lee was on his feet, reaching for the microphone, before he knew he'd moved. But Roslin got in before him. Lee listened to her argue about refugees and salvage operations and revenge, and wondered if he was glad or sorry that his father was alive.

From the look on Zarek's face, he was wondering the same thing. He didn't say it, at least. He knew the exact second when his father broke, when it was clear that however much he protested he was going to do exactly what Roslin asked. "The Fleet will jump to the Ragnar Anchorage," Roslin said, "as soon as we finish evacuating the civilian ships. Thank you, gentlemen."

"She's good," Zarek said, grinning. "A natural. Gods, to have had her with me ten years ago."

"She doesn't know who you are," Lee pointed out. "Once she does, she'll hate you."

"You're so young, Apollo, so naive--."

Lee, looking over his shoulder, saw it happen. Two basestars, where there had been empty air, and Raiders pouring out of them. He grabbed for the mic. "This is Astral Queen to the ships identifying themselves as the Colonial Fleet. I'm broadcasting the coordinates for Ragnar Anchorage. Commence jump prep now. We jump on my mark."

Laura Roslin came on immediately. "Captain, we need another half an hour at least, to finish the evacuation."

"It doesn't matter," Lee said, hoping she could hear the urgency in his voice. "If we stay here, we all die together. Jump in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, jump." He could hear the civilians arguing, begging, offering money, as if there were going to be any need for currency in this strange place their world had become. The last thing he heard before they jumped was a woman screaming, and for a moment it was like being back in Delphi.

His eyes were on the command console; when he looked up the Galactica filled the viewscreen. His father's ship, rusty, dented, antiquated: a flying anachronism, just like his father. If he'd had anything like the necessary weaponry, he would have shot them both out of the sky. Around him, the other ships, the end of humanity, glided into place. There were almost fifty of them, and one of them was Colonial One.

Lee was glad of that, that Roslin, who was nothing more to him than voice in the blackness, was still alive. For the first time he had the leisure to think about all those who probably were not: his mother, Starbuck, the men and women he'd gone to the Academy and War College with, served with on Atlantia, the first girl he'd ever frakked, everyone in the labor camp on Gemenon. Everyone but his father, the ultimate survivor. And Galactica, his mother's greatest rival, which had not only won in the end, but had survived his mother as well.

Two years ago, his father had wanted Lee dead. Now he must believe that Lee was, that both of his sons were. Lee hoped he frakking choked on it.

The pilot was beginning to sag with exhaustion, and Lee sent her away to rest while the commander and the president fought over the future. He would have liked for Roslin to tell the Commander to go to hell, would have liked even more to board the Galactica and wrest her from his father's hands. It could be done, he thought, if they hacked into the computers. He could do it, with Zarek and Mason and a team handpicked from the prison cells of the Queen. He did not do it.

Not because he loved his father, but because he thought that they might need him. Eventually Roslin came back on over the comm unit and told them all to jump, and jump, and jump. The first time Lee was terrified; despite what he'd told Zarek, he wasn't really qualified to fly a ship of this class, and it had been a long time since he'd held the controls of anything bigger than a Viper. But after a while terror subsided into boredom, and then into a struggle to stay awake.

The captain never came out of his cabin. Lee sent the pilot in after him, before the fifth jump. There were two gunshots, and Lee and Zarek went in, reluctantly, to see what had happened. He'd shot them both with his sidearm, her in the chest, himself in the head. He was still alive, but he died during the next jump. Lee had never even known their names.

Lee threw up, afterward, when they'd thrown the bodies out of the airlock into unmarked, unclaimed space. He had been trained to be a soldier, but he didn't feel like one. His only consolation was that Zarek looked just as sick. "I don't think I want to do this anymore," he muttered.

Zarek was trying to scrub the blood off his prison-issue jumpsuit. He snorted. "It could be worse," he said. "You could be out there piloting a Viper on the Gods-damned front lines, you know. How would you like to fly for your old man?"

"I'd rather have been shot for murder back on Caprica," Lee said, and meant it. "I'd rather be interrogated by the Cylon High Command. I'd rather--."

"Six minutes until the next jump," Zarek interrupted. "Apollo, what the frak do we do now?"

"I was waiting for you to tell me," Lee said tiredly. "Tom--."

Zarek looked up, grinning tiredly at him. "Yeah?"

"My guess is, we can carry on this way indefinitely," he said, rubbing his forehead. "Until things slow down no one is going to ask questions. And it's possible the Cylons will kill us, or I'll slip up, or the FTL drive will fail."

"What a cheerful person you are," Zarek said, sounding exasperated.

"So what you're asking is, what do we do if we survive," Lee continued. "At some point they'll ask for passenger manifests." He checked the clock. Four minutes. "We have a couple choices at that point. We can doctor them, make me the pilot and you the captain, and hope the guards are okay with that. We can doctor them, and throw the guards out the airlock, and promote Mason and a couple of the others to take their places. We can throw the guards out the airlock and pretend this wasn't a prison ship."

Two minutes. "We can change our names, you and I, and hope no one recognizes our faces, down the line. It'll be a smaller world, though, wherever we end up." Thirty seconds. "We can tell the truth, and hope my father doesn't shoot me out of hand and Roslin doesn't shoot you. Jump.

"I hate you," Zarek said, out the other side. "Those are the worst choices I've ever heard."

"Yeah," Lee agreed. "Also, I figure you thought of them already, probably three jumps ago, and this was your way of sounding me out."

"Maybe," Zarek said, which mean yes. "I'll be frakked if I can see where we'd get away with any of them. I guess we tell the truth and throw ourselves on their mercy."

"I guess," Lee said, without conviction.


	3. Chapter 3

As it happened, they didn't have a chance to confess; the law came to them, as soon as the Fleet stopped running. Lee and Zarek had found a prisoner with enough commercial flight experience to babysit the Queen's controls, and Zarek and Mason had taken it in turns to watch him, armed with the former captain's pistol, while Lee got six hours of sleep. So he was the only one awake, alone on the flight deck flipping through the Queen's log and making maintenance notes, when the shuttle docked.

It was Roslin. Of course it was Roslin. She was ambitious, Lee would give her that much. He sent one of the guards to get Zarek and walked to the hatch to greet her. She was older than he'd expected, still beautiful, in the way that strong woman always were, when they knew their strength. "Madame President," he said, offering his hand.

"Captain Apollo?" she asked, taking it.

"Yes," Lee said, feeling guilty for the lie. It was Roslin who did it, who made him feel like a child trying to evade punishment. "No. Come in and sit down."

He told her the story, with the names left out: that he'd slept with another man's fiancee, that that man had been killed in an accident, and that he'd been wrongly convicted of murder. It sounded idiotic, when he said it to her. It was idiotic. Telling Roslin, he realized he could no longer even remember what Kara had been like.

It hadn't just cost him Zak, sleeping with her. Hadn't just cost him his relationship with his father, or his career. It had cost him the person he'd been, made him into someone he didn't recognize, someone Laura Roslin was a little afraid to be alone with. He'd been a nice guy, once upon a time: the man Roslin had thought he was, with the Caprican accent and the expensive education.

Now he was an escaped prisoner on a hijacked convict ship. "I'll understand," he said. "If you want to lock us up and throw away the key. But we're not asking for forgiveness, we're asking for a chance to redeem ourselves." Zarek had woken up. Lee could see him waiting, just beyond the doorway.

"Aren't we all," she said, smiling at him tiredly. "Captain--Apollo. Naturally I will have to talk to the Commander about this. But I think that if ever there were a time for redemption, this is it. We're going to need all the willing hands we can get."

"Thank you," Lee said, and meant it. "Thank you for giving us a chance." Zarek raised an eyebrow, and he shook his head. Why complicate things by adding terrorism to the mix? He stood up when Roslin did, walked with her across the bridge.

Just before she got to the hatch, she stopped, and turned toward Lee again. "Captain," she said. "I came here to ask you to be my military advisor. I'd like it if you could do that for me. Be my go-between, when it comes to working with Commander Adama. I think he's uncomfortable talking to a civilian--not to mention a schoolteacher."

Lee flinched. "That wouldn't work," he said, which was like saying the Cylons had won the war, or his father was a little difficult. "The man--the man on Caprica, that they say I killed. That was Commander Adama's son."

"No," Roslin said. "It couldn't have been. They told me that one of Adama's sons murdered the other--." She looked Lee full in the face, considering. "You're his son," she said finally, and Lee knew she believed it. "You don't look anything like him, but still, there's something about you. He doesn't know you're alive?"

"I'd rather it stayed that way," Lee said, not quite asking for it.

Roslin shook her head. "I'm very sorry for you, Captain Apollo." And she climbed back into her shuttle and left.

"Leave me alone," Lee said, and whatever Zarek saw in his face, it was enough that he turned and went without a word.

He was up to his elbows in the Queen's engines when Galactica's CAG came for him. "Send him in," he yelled, and Mason opened the door with a crash. Lee kept working on the loose gimbal, not looking up as the footsteps came closer.

"Gods," a woman said. "It is you. Lee, how could you let the old man think you were dead--."

Lee sat up too quickly and cracked his head hard on a pipe. "Frak," he said, half in disbelief and half in horror. "Kara?"

"He thought you were dead," she hissed at him, same old Starbuck, always angry about something. "Do you have any idea what it did to him? Losing Zak, and now you?"

"I thought you were dead," Lee pointed out, wincing as he touched the back of his head. "Kara--."

"Don't you call me that! I'm still mad at you, Lee. You let me think you killed Zak!"

"I pleaded innocent," Lee said mildly. "At my trial, where you testified against me."

"Yeah," she said. "I'm sorry about that, Lee." Same old Starbuck. He could remember now why he'd loved her, why he'd never stopped. Why she'd driven him crazy even then, when he'd never been sure if she was flirting with him or bored by him.

"What made you change your mind?" he demanded. And watching her mouth droop, "My father. Of course it was. He always knew I wasn't guilty. He just hated my guts anyway."

"He loves you," she argued. "He did everything he could, to try to keep you out of jail. It's because of him you didn't get the death penalty."

"He cared so much he disowned me," Lee said bitterly. "He couldn't be bothered to come to my farce of a trial. How the frak did you end up flying for him?"

"He asked for me," Kara said defensively. "He's been really kind to me, Lee."

"Did you frak him, too?"

She hit him across the engine room, which he probably deserved. He stayed on the floor. "Nice shot, Kara. You been practicing with the old man?"

"Get up," she said. "So I can knock you down again."

"I'm good where I am," Lee said. "What do we now?"

"Your father thinks I'm here to recruit prisoners. We need some help, Lee, or everyone's going to keep on being thirsty. But you--." She smiled at him. "You are a real prize. Do you have any idea how short I am for Viper pilots? If this keeps up I'll have to put Tigh in a flight suit, and no one wants that."

"Yeah," Lee said. "I'm sure my father would rather put me in a flight suit. And then send me out to face a basestar by myself, maybe."

"Lee," she said. "I'm sorry. For all of it. But you have to let it go."

Lee looked up at her. She was thinner than he remembered, her face very pale, and the circles under eyes so dark they were almost black. Her hands were shaking, despite the fact that she'd tucked them in her pockets. "Kara," he said softly. "Have you had any sleep?"

She turned away. For a beautiful woman, she'd always been surprisingly uncomfortable with having people look at her. "I'm the most senior pilot on Galactica," she said. "Did they tell you that? I went from lieutenant senior grade to captain to CAG, all in the space of about ten minutes. I shot down a civilian ship with fifteen hundred people on it. I'm so full of stims I may never sleep again."

Lee got up off the floor and wiped his hands on his orange jumpsuit. "I'll come," he said. "If you need me. But not for my father, Kara, and not because I want to save the world, because I gave up on that crap a long time ago. I'll come and be your wingman, if that's what you want."

She left, slamming the door behind her, and Lee went back to the engine. He wasn't sure if that had been a yes or a no, but with Kara you never could tell. And if she hadn't gone--if she hadn't gone, he wasn't sure he would have been able to keep from kissing her, despite everything.

It frightened him, how much and how little he'd changed. As a penance, he made himself take the crankcase apart so that he could change the seals. It was time consuming, frustrating, and gave him plenty of time to think about Kara, about Laura Roslin, about Zak, who might well be dead now even if he had not died on Caprica. About his father, whom he was going to have to face sooner or later.

He was still putting it back together--and swearing at it--when Zarek came in. "Galactica's just been on the comm," he said. "Back to Olympus for you, Apollo."

"Pliers," Lee said, putting out his hand. "I'll put in a good word for you, Thomas. For all the good it will do you."

"It's a hell of a thing," Zarek said softly, and he sounded sincere. "You spend your whole life fighting for something, only to have it--your cause and your enemy both--obliterated in a heartbeat."

"At least you were fighting for something," Lee said. "It was a good cause, Tom. I'm not sure you always went about it in the best possible way, but hell--at least you thought you were, right?"

Zarek smiled. "Not always," he said. "Sometimes I did the most expedient thing, is all."

"Yeah," Lee said, and smiled back, "well it turns out, sometimes a little expedience isn't the end of the world."

"That was your girl, wasn't it?" Zarek asked. "The one you were in love with, back on Caprica? I can see why you did it, now. If ever there was a woman who looked like trouble, it was that one."

"Yeah," Lee said again, but he was thinking that he'd fallen in love with Kara the first time he'd seen her fly, and not the first time he'd seen the shape of her body.

"Your father and Roslin are going to try to run things between them," Zarek said quietly. "That can't be allowed, Lee. Not without an election. This is one of those turning points: you want a chance to fight for something, this is your chance."

"Is this the right thing to do or the expedient thing?" Lee asked, trying to make a joke of it, trying not to imagine his father as dictator for life.

But Zarek's eyes met his, steady and terrible across the pieces of Astral Queen's filtration system. "Sometimes they're the same," he said. "We can have an election in six months or a year, Lee, or we can have a revolution in five years. You tell me which you'd rather see. These people aren't soldiers. They aren't pioneers. They aren't going to want to run forever. Roslin told me your father claims he knows the way to Earth. You think these people care about getting to Earth? They want running water, food, houses of their own. They want not to bring their children up in space."

"I'll do what I can," Lee said, but he didn't mean it. Zarek was a fanatic, was all: he saw what he was looking for, and he was looking for a revolution the way Lee's father had been looking for a war, the way Roslin had been looking for someone to save, the way Lee himself had been looking for a way to frak things up beyond repair. They were who they were, even at the end of the world. "Listen," he said. "Roslin's not incapable of listening to reason. She's going to figure out who you are eventually, and she's going to forgive you for it. You heard her--if ever there was a time for redemption, this is it. She's going to give you a second chance, and you can use that."

"You've grown up, Adama," Zarek said. "You were a kid when you got Gemenon, weren't you? I think Zeus is going to be pleasantly surprised when he gets a man instead."

"Maybe," Lee said, and he didn't mean that, either.

They put cuffs on him, when they came for him, and he let them even though it terrified him. Kara wasn't with them, and they had no reason to be gentle. They were his father's people.

Stepping onto the flight deck of Galactica felt like going to be executed. There were a dozen pilots standing around, two dozen deck crew, Mark IIs covered in battle scars. That was how his father had survived: by putting antiques in the air to fight. Lee was almost sorry he'd missed it.

Colonel Tigh was waiting for him, which meant his father wasn't, and that Lee had few minutes grace, still. "Welcome aboard, Lieutenant Adama," he said gruffly to Lee, and then, to the ECO, "Strike his irons, lieutenant. This is the old man's son."

"Not any more," Lee said, rubbing his wrists. "Not lieutenant, and not Adama. It's just Apollo now, Colonel."

"We'll see what your father says about that," Tigh said, smiling a little. He'd always liked it when Lee and his father fought.

"No doubt about that, Colonel." But Lee put out his hand, in defiance of military protocol, and Tigh took it, and clapped him on the shoulder, after.  
"My orders are to take you to the CIC, boy. Hurry it up. You know your father's looking forward to seeing you."

Once upon a time Lee might have run. Now he followed Tigh, and he didn't rush doing it. Galactica looked the same to him, only a little older, with a few new wounds. The commander of Atlantia had called her that bucket, and it suited her: "that damned bucket of rust your father commands," had outlived all the younger, sleeker battlestars. She was a grand old lady, in her way.

His father had changed as little as his ship. Tigh saluted before he stepped onto the dais; Lee stepped up beside him, hands at his sides, and looked the Commander full in the face.

"Lee," his father said, so softly and painfully Lee was not sure he'd heard right. And that quickly, any sign of weakness was gone: the man who stepped forward to greet Lee was the man who'd turned his back on him on Caprica.

"I hear you're short on pilots," Lee said. It came out flip, even though he'd meant it to be pleasant. He guessed he hadn't grown up after all. "Commander." He couldn't salute. He tried to smile, instead. From his father's expression, it wasn't enough.

"This isn't a joke," his father said. "I need men and women who are prepared to risk their lives in the service. If you can't do that, maybe you should go back."

Back to prison, for a crime the old man knew he hadn't committed. "I'll do whatever you need me to," he said. "Sir." Pausing just a second too long: just that hairsbreadth of insolence that was not quite punishable. Kara had taught him that.

"You'll have to re-qualify as a pilot," the Commander said. "First thing in the morning, Mr. Adama--."

"Call me Apollo," Lee said politely. "Everyone does." His mother would have hit him for it. Zarek would have hit him. His father turned away, just like he'd been doing all Lee's life. This man is no son of mine; no son of mine would have done this thing. Once upon a time it had broken Lee's heart, but now it made Lee gloriously, selfishly proud of himself. It was easier to live down to expectations than up to them.

They gave him a room to himself, at least, instead of putting him in with the other pilots. Who--Kara excepted--would probably have lynched him. They locked him in, but he didn't care. It seemed like a lifetime since he'd had so much privacy. There wasn't enough water for a shower but he wiped the worst of the dirt off with a damp towel and shaved, dry, before he put on a dead man's clothes and went to sleep.

Kara woke him, banging on the door. "Up," she said. "Hurry. I don't know what you did to piss off the Commander and I don't want to know. But he says you've got to meet all the qualifications, not just the flight ones, and you have to do them all today."

"Frak," Lee said with feeling. He sat up, rubbing his eyes. "All of them?"

"Just like at the Academy." Kara was too bright, too cheerful; Lee knew that something was wrong, but he no longer had the right to ask, no longer even had the words for it. The past was a dead language, and best it remained so, but it hurt to see her like this.

After she went out, he got dressed and ate the protein bars she'd left him. He'd been twenty-one when he'd qualified the first time, and in the best shape of his life. He was twenty-six now, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd run a five minute mile. Much less three of them.

Galactica's medical officer did his physical exam with all the finesse of a racetrack veterinarian, but he didn't say anything about the scars Lee'd acquired in the last few years. Lee's blood tests were clean, which was a tremendous relief. He hadn't been tested since before Delphi, and he'd always wondered. And the only thing worse than explaining his sexual history to his commanding officer would have been explaining it to his father.

The first laps around Galactica weren't bad. He'd run on Gemenon, not seriously, but enough to stay a little bit fit. But the sixth time was pure torture. He stopped and threw up once on the crew deck, and again near the bridge with his father and Tigh both watching. By then, though, he was too tired to care. When he finished he sagged against the wall, leaning over and gulping in air.

"Marginal," his father announced, noting the time for Tigh. "But a pass. Congratulations." Lee shuddered and wiped his mouth on his tanks. He did better on the strength portions, at least: better than he'd done at twenty-one, even. As he put on the flight suit he'd been given, he realized with some surprise that the sick feeling in his stomach hadn't gone away. It wasn't exhaustion, or at least not only exhaustion. It was nerves.

He was afraid to climb into a Viper. He was afraid to die the way Zak had--screaming. His hands shook as he fastened the collar around his neck. He opened the door and went out onto the flight deck. His father and Tigh were waiting, and it wasn't only nervousness that made their eyes hard, their faces fiendish. If it had been anyone else but his father there, he might not have managed, but his pride was stronger than his fear.

He did his safety check, and then he sat in the launch tube waiting, panicking quietly. He could not remember what to do. "Apollo," said the voice in his headset. "This is Galactica. You are cleared for launch."

"Affirmative, Galactica," Lee said, and almost without thinking about it he closed his eyes and his instincts took over. His body knew what to do, if his mind didn't. His Viper streaked out of the tube and into open space, and he compensated for the drag, kept his nose up, and shot into formation with the CAP.

A part of him was still quivering, still terrified by the thought of doing a combat landing on the Galactica's flight deck, of misjudging, of burning to death. It was fast, he'd said when told his mother. It was so fast I doubt he even knew what happened, he'd said to Kara. It had not been true. It might not be true for Lee, either. "Blue Leader," he said. "This is Apollo. Waiting for orders."

"Affirmative, Apollo," Kara--Starbuck--said from the lead Viper. It shouldn't have been a surprise. He'd known she was the CAG. But it felt different to fly under someone he'd loved, someone his own age, someone he'd once outranked, even.

For eight hours she put him through his paces without any mercy at all. Lee thought that if he had not recognized her voice, her call-sign, he would never have guessed whose orders he was following. Not because she was tough--he could remember Zak complaining about how tough she'd been. But because there was no humor in her voice, no flair to her flying. Everything she threw at him was strictly textbook. It was the kind of thing Lee had always been best at, but Kara had never gone by the book.

By the time he put the Viper down, with perfect, textbook precision, he was so tired he wasn't worried. His fingers, curled on the controls, were almost too stiff to unbend. The deck chief took Lee's helmet and hauled him out of his ship without a word. Lee stumbled down the ladder, looking for Kara, but she was gone.

There was no one waiting to clap him back in irons. Lee assumed that meant he'd passed. In fact, there was no one waiting for him at all. And so he went after Kara. He tracked her the length and breadth of the ship, asking everyone he passed, and he found her in a hallway full of photographs of dead. She was on her knees, a picture in her hands.

Lee stopped behind her and looked down at it. Zak, himself, Kara between them; all three of them in uniform and impossibly young. "I'd forgotten," he said hollowly. "Forgotten what Zak even looked like. Gods, Kara. I miss him so much."

She set the photograph down on the floor, and he saw that there was a small hole in it, at the center, on the top. A pinhole. She'd had it tacked up here with the others, with the pictures of the worlds lost when the Cylons invaded. Zak had been two years dead, then: she'd been mourning Lee.

He flopped down beside her, shoulder to shoulder, as close to touching her--as close to touching anyone that way--as he'd come voluntarily in more than two years. "Kara," he said, running his fingers absently over the edges of the picture. "Kara--."

She looked over at him, her eyes very dark, her mouth trembling. "No one calls me that any more, Lee. Apollo. No one. They call me Starbuck, or they call me Captain Thrace, sir, and they salute when they say it. And that's the way I want it. Can't you understand that? I can't be their friends. I can't be yours."

"Can't you?" Lee asked, gently, gently as he'd handle a Viper with mechanical failure, on the edge of disaster. "Starbuck." Throttle all the way in, and watching her the way he'd watch the pressure gauges falling. "What's wrong with you?"

"Gods, Lee," she said, and for a second she looked like the old Kara. "You don't know what you're asking. What I did."

Lee looked at her steadily, and tried not to ask. He knew that whatever she had done it would be something terrible, something unforgivable. Kara had never dealt in half measures.

"I killed Zak," she said softly, but not so softly he could not hear her. "All of this. All of it is my fault, Lee."

The only thing that kept him still and quiet was his shock; he did not think he could have moved if he'd wanted to. But once she had begun, the words spilled out of her. Lee could only listen, fists clenched tight in his lap.

"He should never have passed Basic Flight," she said. "He was a lousy pilot, and I loved him enough to pass him but not enough to fail him. He wasn't prepared, he wasn't good enough, he should never have been behind the controls of that Viper. He's dead because of me. You went to prison because of me. Your father lost both of his sons. Gods, Lee, I did this to your family. I frak up everything I touch, I always have--."

"Hey," Lee said, caught by the hopelessness of her voice more than the words. "No, Kara, no. We did this to ourselves. You didn't exactly force me into bed with you, you know. You did everything you could to train Zak. He should never have even been at the Academy. He only ever did it because he thought it was what Dad wanted. And Dad and I--you couldn't have ruined things between us if you'd tried. Nothing I ever did in my whole life was good enough for him, anyway."

He caught her hand in his, and squeezed it. It was small in his, but her fingers were strong. She was crying, hard: ugly and painful sobs that sounded more like exhaustion than grief. He wanted to put his arms around her, but he wasn't sure she'd tolerate it, if she hadn't been able to stand him using her first name.

Instead he sat with her, until finally she fell asleep. He dozed a little, too, his back against the wall and her face against his thigh, but as tired as he was he couldn't relax enough to sleep properly in in the hallway, with no door to lock against the world. He was awake enough that when the speakers clicked on, he heard the request for Captain Thrace and Ensign Adama to report to CIC. He touched Kara's cheek and she jerked awake. "My father," he began, and she rolled to her feet before he could finish.

"Gods," she swore. "Did I fall asleep? Here? I was supposed to report to the Commander as soon as CAP was over. Frakking--frak. Get up, Apollo. Move!"

Lee got up, stiffly. "I'm moving," he said, rubbing his eyes. "Kara--."

"Don't," she said. "I can't, Lee. I can't be her. I won't. She--she got people killed, all right? She was a weak, silly little girl, and I don't want to be that person. Not now and not ever."

"You think any of us get to choose who we want to be?" Lee demanded, but her back was to him. She was walking away from him, or she was walking toward his father, and Lee had no choice but to follow her.

He did not have to like it. Kara stopped at the edge of the bridge and saluted crisply. After a moment Lee followed suit. They stood at attention until his father deigned to notice them. "You had orders to report here directly after CAP," he said, presumably to Kara, but his eyes were on Lee's face. Lee wanted to look away, but he knew better than to do so.

Beside him, Kara was making some excuse. She was good at it now, much better than she'd been as a cadet. Someone, his father or circumstance, had taught her respect: the deferential tone, the tilt of her head, the sincerity of voice. She sounded like an officer, where before she'd sounded like a petulant teenager. Lee had sounded like an officer once, and was suddenly afraid he'd grown out of it, and sounded like an angry child when he spoke to his father.

There was logic behind the old rule that had governed the Fleet: that no one should have family to command. Of course, all of the retired admirals who had taught at the war college and run the Academy and the Fleet--all of the brilliant military minds of Caprica and the Twelve Colonies--were dead now. Only his father was alive. It was not the most persuasive argument for their wisdom.

"Are we boring you, Ensign?" his father demanded, and Lee lifted his eyes, startled. He hadn't been able to sleep earlier, sitting on the carpeted floor of the hallway, but he'd been close to asleep on his feet in front of the Commander.

"No, sir," he stammered, and flushed, despite himself. He had been a model cadet and a model officer, not because he was ambitious but because he hated being in trouble. To have the trouble be with his terrifying and scornful father seemed brutally unfair. He'd heard, his whole life, about what a monster Commander Adama was to serve under: that only Atlantia and Pegasus--the two flagships--were worse assignments for a young officer. He had survived Atlantia. He was less confident about surviving Galactica.

He stood, sullen and quiet, while Kara recounted every move, every mistake he'd made. Even his father's eyes were a little glazed by the end of it. But he pinned Lee's wings onto his borrowed flight suit, and he returned Lee's salute afterward. And then he said, "You're both dismissed for tonight. I'll see you in my quarters at 0800 tomorrow, Ensign Adama."

Lee saluted again, glumly. "Yes, sir." Kara was already walking away, and he had to hurry to catch her, but by the time they left the CIC he was on her heels.

"Captain," he said, and when she didn't turn to look at him, didn't even slow down, he grabbed her arm.

She turned then. "Don't touch me, Ensign," she said, and her eyes were dark and dangerous. "You heard the Commander. Get your ass to quarters."

"Sure thing, sir," Lee said, drawling it like the guards had on Gemenon, when they'd been talking to Tom Zarek. "Where would that be?"

Kara stared at him, flustered. "What do you mean?" she demanded.

"Am I an officer or a prisoner?" Lee asked her. "Do I get my own private room again, or am I bunking with the other pilots? And where's the mess?"

Kara sighed, and he could almost see the anger drain out of her, leaving nothing but exhaustion in its place. She said, "The senior officers' quarters is practically empty. You can bunk there. Do you have any gear?"

Lee shook his head. "Nothing but what they gave me last night."

"Yeah. Well, there's plenty of spare, I guess." She pushed her hair out of her face. "Come on. You can have Ripper's stuff. He was more or less your size. You need a shower before they'll let you near the food."

"I thought there wasn't any water," Lee objected.

Kara smiled. "They've got your buddies from the prison ship on it. I'm sure things are taken care of."

"Frak," Lee said, thinking of Zarek, and elections. He wasn't looking forward to talking to his father in the morning.


	4. 4

That night Lee ate in the pilots' mess and slept in the pilots' bunkroom, and Kara was the only one who spoke to him. She did not apologize again, but he could feel her words between them, still. He hadn't forgiven her. He didn't even know how to begin to do that. And yet she was so devastated he couldn't hate her, either. For once he couldn't remember dreaming of Zak or of Delphi, and if he woke anyone with his screaming, they didn't break their code of silence to tell him.

He put on Ripper's dress uniform for his meeting with his father, because it was as close to putting on armor as he was going to get. And then he had to take it off again and wear tanks, because it still had Ripper's decorations on it, and Lee wasn't going to risk having the Commander tell him off for impersonating a Captain.

He found his father's quarters without help, and banged on his door at exactly 0800. The Commander, when he opened it, was as immaculate as ever, his blues pressed and perfect. But when Lee saluted like a good little soldier and stood waiting for permission to enter, he waved wearily at him. "Give it a rest, Lee, can't you?" he asked. "At least when we're in private."

"Fine, Dad. Whatever you want," Lee said, and leaned against the wall across from his father. It was too late to be the good son, so he wasn't sure what part to play. He thought of Zarek, and made a conscious effort to act like a grownup. "How have you been?"

"Alive, anyway," which puts me ahead of almost everyone," his father said dryly. "I'm glad you're all right, Lee. Gods help me, but I'm grateful you went to prison, because if you'd still been on Atlantia..."

"There were no survivors at all?" Lee asked. "None?"

"Their Vipers shut down in mid air," his father said, very gently, as if he were speaking to someone else entirely. It was not a tone he had ever used with Lee. "It would have been quick."

"Yeah," Lee said, not much comforted. Atlantia had been his first post, the first time in his life he'd gotten something he wanted. Openings on the flagship were rare; every officer he'd served with had been both gifted and well-connected. They'd worked twice as hard, and been promoted twice as fast. And they'd been his friends, once upon a time. "I'm sure it was." Not quick enough, though.

"Dad--." He couldn't forgive his father, either. He didn't even want to try. "Why did you want to see me?"

"Do I need a reason to see my son?" his father said, but the words were painful, flat. He needed a damned good reason, and he and Lee both knew it. "What can you tell me about this man Tom Zarek?"

"He was my cellmate," Lee said. "On Gemenon." What would Zarek have given, to get to listen to Lee having this conversation with his father? "I know him fairly well, I guess." It was an understatement. Lee knew more about Tom Zarek than he did about anyone else he'd ever met. But knowing Zarek and predicting what he'd do were two very different things. It was not the sort of distinction that his father was likely to appreciate: that you could recognize the sound of someone's breathing, you could watch them piss, shake them awake when they were dreaming: that it still, in the end, meant nothing.

He had thought he knew Kara once. He had thought he knew his father. "He's a good man to have at your back," he said finally, "so long as you can be sure you're fighting for the same thing. He's--ruthless. Ambitious. But honest, too, in his own way. There's nothing he won't do to win, no one he won't sacrifice if it comes to that. But maybe that's what we need. This is a war, after all."

"You've changed," his father said, like it was a revelation. "You never used to be so cynical."

Lee shrugged. "I never used to be a lot of things. Cynical is the least of them."

"The Cylons," his father said tiredly. And Lee knew that this was why he'd been ordered to come, that whatever his father had meant to say to him today it had nothing to do with Zak, or even with Tom Zarek. It was nothing but business, and it never had been, and Lee was an idiot for thinking any differently.

"We've learned that the Cylons can pass for human. That means that anyone, anyone in the Fleet, anyone on Galactica--could be one of them."

He was, despite himself, a soldier; he had studied tactics at War College and he could see the ramifications of it immediately. It was only his own involvement that confused him. "And you think I'm one of them," Lee hazarded.

His father laughed. "No," he said. "Don't you see, Lee? You're one of maybe a half-dozen people I can be sure of, people I've known so long I can trust that they are who they say they are. You. Saul. Tom Zarek. I want you to hunt them down."

"I'm a pilot, not a policeman," Lee protested. But, Gods help him, he was thinking about it already. "Are you sure about this, Dad? I mean, sure about the Cylons? Because when the civilians find out, they're going to tear each other to pieces. If there's a chance it isn't true--."

"No," the Commander said, and he looked Lee in the eye, saying it. "There's no chance. That's why I want to know if you trust Zarek. Because I don't have any way of knowing for sure about Roslin."

"I'd trust Tom with my life," Lee told him. "I'd trust him with Starbuck's life."

His father looked at him with something with pity. "You're still crazy for her? After what she did to you? I love Kara, Lee, I do. But she isn't in the same place as you are."

Lee's eyes stung with tears. "Maybe," he said, blinking them back, staring at the empty wall behind his father's head. "Maybe I haven't forgiven her yet, either, Dad. She didn't kill Zak, but she put him in that Viper. You think I'm over that? But I love her, and I think--."

"What do you mean?" his father demanded. "What do you mean she put Zak in the Viper? She was his flight instructor, but that doesn't mean she was responsible."

"I thought--." But Lee couldn't finish the sentence. I thought she'd told you, he wanted to say. I thought you knew what she'd done.

"She testified against you," his father said slowly. "She as good as sent you to jail. But that's not what you meant, is it?"

Lee walked out, and his father did not try to stop him.

He was still in the corridor when the alarms went off. "Condition One," the speakers blared. "Set Condition One throughout the ship. All pilots report to the flight deck." Lee started to run.

He'd been worried that he'd panic again when the Cylons attacked, that he'd sit in his Viper in the launch tube until they vented him. But it turned out that there wasn't time to panic. There wasn't even time to think. He struggled into his flight suit and the deck crew shoved him into his Viper and launched him without so much as a countdown, and he fired his engines and shot into the middle of a battle.

It was messy and exhilarating and terrifying, nothing like the sims he'd trained in at the Academy. There there had been a limited number of possible situations and responses. There the Cylons had been limited by the laws of physics. There he'd had time to plan, because the Cylons had come at plottable intervals. That had been about winning, about beating the system. This was about surviving.  
The good thing about being outnumbered was that it meant there was no need to aim. He fired, banked right, and fired again. To his left, someone took a direct hit, and he saw the Viper fall away. He could hear the other pilots swearing through his headset, but he didn't have time to do anything but react to what was in front of him.

It was over as suddenly as it had begun. The Raider in front of him disappeared so quickly that Lee slammed into a barrel roll purely out of surprise. "All ships return to Galactica," his comm unit blared. "Stand by for combat landings."

And when he put his Mark II down on the deck, someone said, "Nice job out there, Apollo." It wasn't Kara, either.

This time he didn't look for her. Instead he went to CIC. His father was there. Lee saluted, and when he was acknowledged, he said, "I need to make a ship-to-ship call, to Astral Queen.

"Fine," his father said. "Dee, get Astral Queen on the comm. Put it through to my quarters, please.

"Of course, sir," but the smile the petty officer directed to Lee was almost sympathetic. It didn't make him feel any better.

Zarek's voice, tinny through the speaker, did, a little. "Apollo! Glad to hear you're still alive. How's Zeus?"

"Present and accounted for," Lee admitted, not looking at his father. "You heard anything about Cylons, Tom?"

He could almost hear Zarek thinking. He'd be wondering where the advantage lay, of course; what he should admit to and what he should keep hidden. He had never played this game with Lee before, but then this was for the Commander's benefit, not Lee's.

"I know what the President told me," Zarek said finally. "Is it true? Do they look like us?"

Lee clicked off the speaker and covered the mouth piece before he looked over at his father, but the Commander gestured for him to turn it back on.

"The look like us," he said. "But our preliminary investigations show that there are only twelve different models, and we've identified several of those."

Zarek must have known this. He didn't hesitate before he said, "There are almost fifty thousand people in the Fleet, Commander. You want to, what, photograph and fingerprint all of 'em? Then run some kind of recognition software and see how many doubles you get?"

Lee's father looked up sharply at that. He hadn't considered it, then. He wasn't a policeman, he was a soldier. And Zarek was a criminal; he'd know how this kind of thing worked. "How difficult would that be to do?" he demanded.

No hesitation this time either. Zarek had thought all of this out, then. "Hard," he said. "Not impossible, assuming you can put together the equipment and software. Fifty people could do it in a week, say, two hundred people a day, and two days to input the information. Tell everyone that it's a census, that you need the pictures to help people look for missing family members. The key is doing everyone, though, and the people who want to avoid it are the people you need most. They're the ones who know what you're looking for--the Cylons."

"Yes," his father said thoughtfully. "There is that. Zarek, I'm putting Lieutenant Adama in charge of this. He'll liaise with you as necessary. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that this goes no further than the three of us."

"No, Commander," Zarek answered. "Thank you for the vote of confidence."

"Well," Lee's father said, not smiling. "These are desperate times. I've got to get back to CIC, but I'll leave you to it, Lieutenant."

"Actually," Lee interrupted. "If I could have a word, Commander, before you go." He flicked off the speaker. "I thought I was Ensign Adama?"

"Battlefield promotion," his father said, and this time he did smile. "Lee--you did a good job out there today. You and I both know that what happened on Caprica didn't change the fact that you were a damned fine pilot, and a better officer. You know what President Roslin said? She said that if there was ever a time for second chances, this is it. And she was right about that."

"So you're, what? Forgiving me?" Lee couldn't keep his voice from rising on the words.

But: "Yeah," his father said, hand on the door. "Don't frak it up."

When he was gone Lee turned the speaker back on. "Tom?"

"What was that?" Zarek asked, and he sounded like he was laughing. "Apollo, did you bring the mighty Zeus to his knees already?"

"I haven't mentioned your frakking elections, if that's what you mean."

"No. But it sounds like you've brought Daddy around on certain other important issues, Lieutenant."

Lee sighed. "I don't know. I don't understand him. I never have. He's been riding me since I got here, and suddenly he wants to forget everything that happened--but I don't think I can do that. I don't even want to do that."

"You having a good time over there other than that?" Zarek asked. "How's it feel to have your life back?"

"Weird," Lee admitted. "Not the flying so much, but Kara--."

"You frak her yet?" And when Lee didn't answer. "Trust me, Apollo. The longer you wait, the harder it gets. Have a couple of drinks and do it. Keep the lights on the first time and make sure you're on top."

"Yeah," Lee said. "Thanks for that." And made sure it sounded as sarcastic as possible, even though he meant it. It was the kind of advice he couldn't have asked for, no matter how much he needed it. "Focus, Zarek. The Cylons. I don't want to have to explain to my father that we spent half an hour talking about my sex life."

"Fair enough," Tom said, and Lee knew he'd heard and was acknowledging the thank you Lee hadn't been able to give him. He'd gone to prison the first time at twenty-one, and he hadn't even had Lee's military training. He knew what it was like. "The Cylons. You think your dad tortured someone to get that information, or what? You don't want to discuss it. I know. Don't you forgive him, Apollo. Not yet. Roslin has a pet scientist from Caprica who claims he can build a Cylon detector. He's a liar, or at least he's lying about being from Caprica. It's harder to fake a Caprican accent than you might think."

Lee snorted. "Never con a con man, right? Should I have him arrested?"

"Might as well. Although--it's not a half bad idea, when you come down to it, a Cylon detector. It doesn't have to work, it just has to look official. The people are going to have to find out some time, and that might help to reassure them."

"Your cynicism is so refreshing," Lee said, and then yawned so hard that his jaw cracked. "Sorry. It's been kind of a long day."

"Yeah," Zarek said, and for once he sounded almost sympathetic. "That I believe. This is enough to start with, anyway. Why don't you see if there's anyone at your end who can sort out the software, and I'll work on the rest of it."  
"Thanks," Lee said. "Really, Tom. Thank you. I'll call you in a day or two, and you can brief me. Will you be on the Queen?"

"With luck," Zarek said, "I'll be on Colonial One. Later, Apollo." And clicked off before Lee could come up with anything rude to say. He got up, slowly. All the adrenalin that had kept him going through the battle and afterward had worn off, and he was tired again. He scrawled a note for his father about arresting Roslin's scientist, went back to quarters and rolled himself into Ripper's bunk. He still had ten hours until he was scheduled to go on CAP.

When he woke up it was because someone was in his bunk with him. There was a hand on his shoulder and a hand over his mouth. Lee came up fighting, and there was a squeak as he caught the person somewhere soft with his elbow. It was the squeak that did it. "Kara?" he hissed, and she flailed and hit him in the face.

He shoved her hard enough to send her rolling out of the bed onto the floor. "What the frak are you idiots doing?" someone asked sleepily, but by the time Lee untangled himself and climbed out it was impossible to tell who it was. It must have been night; the lights were dimmed and all of the occupied bunks had their curtains drawn.

Kara was on her feet. Without a word, she grabbed Lee's arm and hauled him outside. He was glad he hadn't bothered getting undressed. "We have to stop meeting like this," he said. "People will talk."

"You were making this noise," she said softly, "in your sleep. Lee--."

"You don't ever have nightmares, I guess. Not Starbuck. She's invincible, inhuman, even."

"Shut up," Kara said. She wasn't crying. Not yet. "I dream about the frakking Olympic Carrier every time I close my eyes. Every pilot--probably everyone in the Fleet--has nightmares. But not like that. What did they do to you? Lee?"

He walked away from her, because he had no words to describe watching his brother die, or Delphi, Gemenon, the Astral Queen, the way his father made him feel. She followed him. Men didn't walk away from Kara Thrace. She got in front of him and shoved him back against the wall, and he wondered how he could ever have thought of her as delicate. Her hands, on his wrists, were as strong as steel.

"Frak me or fight me," he said. "But either way, let me go."

She kissed him, but her fingers loosened. He had not remembered how she tasted, how she felt against him. But he knew she hadn't been crying on Caprica. "Don't," he said against her mouth. "Please. Don't do it unless you want to." But his hands were free; he brought them up to cup her face. He loved her. He would forgive her anything. He would frak her here in the passageway if she asked him to.

There was someone coming. Lee heard the footsteps at the same time she did, felt her tense against him. Let her go. They were on opposite sides of the hallway by the time she came around the corner: one of his father's enlisted officers. She saluted Lee and Kara, and stood at attention while they saluted back.

"Sir," she said to Lee, "the President wants to see you. She's meeting with Commander Adama in his quarters, and she asked that you be sent for."

"Tell her I'll be there in fifteen minutes," Lee said with a sigh, and glanced over at Kara. She gave him a smile that was dangerously close to her old smirk, and his heart turned over. When the noncom was gone he closed the distance between them and kissed her again. In fifteen minutes he could do her here against the wall, and not satisfy either of them. But it would be a start.

"Go," Kara said. Maybe she could tell what he was thinking, or maybe she was thinking the same thing. "It's the President."

"This isn't over, Thrace," he said, but he kissed her forehead before he ducked back into quarters to change.

This time he did wear Ripper's uniform. Roslin wouldn't know the difference, and it fit like it had been made for him. It looked good on him, too; his eyes in the mirror were cool and steady, and for the first time in a long time he recognized the man looking back.

The first thing Roslin said to him was, "Congratulations on your promotion, Lieutenant." The second was, "I'm sure you have your reasons for arresting Dr. Baltar."

Lee couldn't think what she was talking about, but he hadn't gotten to the top of his class at the Academy without learning to talk to teachers. "Yes ma'am, I do." He looked past her to his father, but the Commander's face was expressionless. He was enjoying this.

That quickly, Lee had it. Baltar must be the scientist Zarek had suspected of having the wrong accent. "There are some questions I'd like to ask the doctor. It's a matter of Fleet security--you'll understand if I can't go into it here." And something he'd learned from Zarek; he let his eyes cut away from her to his father, and back to her, as if to say, You understand, him I can't trust. Roslin smiled at him, and he knew she'd bought it.

"Well. As long as it's important," she said, and he smiled back.  
"Yes," he said. "In fact, if you'll excuse me--."

"Of course, Lieutenant," his father said, standing up. "Dismissed."

Lee saluted and fled, before he found himself confessing to the President that he'd arrested Baltar on what amounted to a whim.

He found the CIC without to much trouble this time. "Get Astral Queen on the line," he said. "I need Tom Zarek over here straight away."

"Oh," the comms officer said, sounding surprised. "But he's here, Lieutenant Adama. He came over with President Roslin. From Colonial One."

Frakking Zarek. It was a good thing they hadn't had a bet on it. "Have him sent for," Lee said. "I'll want him to meet me in the brig."

He had to admit, when he saw Baltar he understood Zarek's point. He'd been in three prisons on two planets, and he'd never seen a man so clearly guilty of something as Gaius Baltar. It didn't mean he was a Cylon, or even a sympathizer--but he could remember what Roslin had said, about forgiveness at the end of the world. If Baltar couldn't even forgive himself, what must his crime have been?

He was still watching the man when Zarek came in. "He's talking to someone," Lee said without turning around. "Someone who isn't there. See the way his head is tilted? He must be insane."

"Yeah," Zarek said. "You think we should let it go?"

Lee looked at Baltar's pale, sweaty face for again. "No," he said finally. "I mean, he's definitely done something. Besides, I have to justify arresting him somehow. Roslin's on my ass as it is."

"She's something, isn't she," Zarek agreed, smirking. "Okay, then. How do you want to play this?"

"Oh," Lee smiled. "I don't think it will be too hard. Bad cop, bad cop."

"I love you, I think," Zarek said, as they went in. And, almost without pause, "Dr. Baltar. I hear you've been a naughty boy."

Baltar actually flinched as they closed in on him. "There must be some mistake," he said desperately. Lee knew his type: they thought they were smarter than everyone else, that the rules didn't apply to them. And when you caught them at it they pissed themselves.

"Really?" he demanded. "A mistake? Is that what you call it? A mistake would be my breaking your fingers and then finding out you're innocent."

"But Apollo, you don't make mistakes," Zarek said from the scientist's other side. He already had hold of Baltar's hand.

After that it was just a matter of writing down everything down. And it was good, too, better than Lee had imagined. He hadn't expected such passion. "I'll find a sketch artist later and see if we can get a drawing of this blond Cylon thing," he said to Zarek afterward. "It might help us i. d. her if she turns up again. What do you think we should do with him?"

"Let Roslin handle it, I guess," Zarek said. "Or we could just throw him out an air vent."

Lee glanced over at him. He looked tired, and a little sick, the way he had the night the captain of the Astral Queen died. Like he'd seen too much.

"What?" Zarek asked. "You're staring at me, Apollo. I know you don't have much in the way of social graces--."

"Does it bother you, what we did in there?"

Zarek sighed. "It would bother me if it didn't. You do your job, but you don't have to be your job. Now more than ever."

"I liked it," Lee said softly. "I was good at it, and I liked it."

"You didn't," Zarek said, and there was no doubt in his voice. "You didn't like it, and you weren't even all that good at it. You don't have the imagination for it. There are a thousand things you're good at, but torture isn't one of them. Deep down, you're still your father's son."

"I'm not. I won't be." But Lee couldn't help wondering if it was true, if he wanted it to be true.

"Then you're in luck. Haven't you heard? It's the end of the world, and you can be anyone you want."

"What if I don't know what I want?" They were almost back to the CIC, and Zarek stopped and leaned against a bulkhead. Lee stopped, too.

"I'm going to tell you something you probably don't want to hear," Zarek said. "You need to frakking get it together, Apollo. You aren't irreplaceable. You want to fly Vipers, you fly. You want to be in politics, or work security, or go back and sit in a cell and play cards with Mason, that can be arranged. No matter what you choose, life will go on for the rest of us. You don't choose anything, life will still go on. This self-pity's not real attractive, though. You don't have to work for your father, and you don't have to make his choices."

Zarek was right. Lee didn't want to hear it, which probably meant it was true. "I hate you," he said tiredly. "Gods damn it." He sat down where he was, on the floor. "What am I doing?"

"Making an ass out of yourself, as always," Zarek said cheerfully, sitting next to him.

"They do need pilots, you know. More than anything else, except water and fuel."

"Oh, I know." Zarek yawned. "It's just a frakking waste, is all. Your dad has some crazy plan to find Earth, did you know that? But I figure he's making it up. Give the people hope, all that fine, noble Caprican crap. The truth is we're probably going to die somewhere out here in the middle of nowhere. We'll run out of water or fuel or we'll starve or the Cylons will get us, but we aren't going to get to Earth--if there even is an Earth. So the way I figure it is, we might as well do what we want. I want to be on the right side for once. I want to be part of a government that works, that actually helps people. And I wouldn't mind getting to know Laura Roslin a little better."

"I want--," Lee said thinking about it. It had been a long time since what he wanted mattered. "I want to frak Kara Thrace. And probably marry her. I don't want to interrogate people and throw them out of airlocks. I want to fly. I want to be part of what you're building." He stopped, embarrassed.

"Well," Zarek said, smiling. "What are you waiting for? Go. Win the girl and change the future."

And Lee went.


End file.
